


just shy of almost, not quite enough

by kenopsia (indie)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Affection, M/M, Mentions of friendly threesomes, Mixed-messages, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-20 01:16:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4768073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indie/pseuds/kenopsia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur, because he is a criminal, and has had an erosion of boundaries in the last decade since he started poking around in people’s brains, has a thought: he could go into Eames’ dreams. Eames always accuses him of being stuffy and inflexible but he’s creative enough when it comes to jobs: he could paint his own name across the asphalt and pave over it with cobblestones, kiss projections until they all know him, use his skills acquired as a point man to systematically work through anything that might make Eames love him.</p><p>Which is clearly an insane thought. He is just as unhinged as Cobb. What an embarrassing thing to be aware of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Never have I ever,” Rita says, cutting her eyes around the room, “had a threesome with my best friend.”

Rita looks sly, and Arthur knows she’s calling someone out specific, but he can’t figure out who. Teddy, their extractor looks amused but makes no move towards his glass, past Helen, and Arthur keeps his eyes moving, until. Oh shit.

Eames touches the glass to his mouth, takes a sip.

“Oh, come on,” Rita says, laughing, and Eames drains the rest of the glass, muscles of his neck jumping. Arthur’s heart thumps heavily in his chest.

“You should probably drink that, too,” Rita says, topping off his glass.

“You’ve made your point, dear,” Eames says, brow folding and his mouth losing that indulgent curl.

“Wait, what,” Arthur huffs.

“Not now,” Eames says, and Eames really must not be amused because his eyes go a little sharp. “Never have I ever,” he says, one fingertip circling the rim of his newly-full glass, “gone down on someone who fell asleep in the middle of the act.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Rita says, taking a drink.

Arthur takes an embarrassing drink, too. “Sorry, pet,” Eames says, giving his knee a friendly pat.

“Never have I ever,” Arthur says thinking, “had sex on a level of a job.”

Everyone in the circle puts their glasses to their mouths. “Barbarians,” he mutters. “I’m never working with any of you guys again.”

“Oh, come off it,” Helen says, amused. Arthur generally likes her efficiency but now he knows that she’s just as ridiculous as everyone else.

*

Later, when they’re back in Arthur’s LA apartment, Arthur is curious. He doesn’t think about it until he’s got his head on Eames’ chest, absently trailing on finger down his chest, and that night comes back to him in a vivid jolt.

“Why did Rita know that you’ve had a threesome with your best friend?” Arthur asks.

“She’s been in my head, darling,” he says. “These things come out.”

Arthur is quiet for a minute, one thigh hiked up and resting on the top of Eames’ leg. “Okay, but she wanted you to drink a second glass,” he says, still puzzling it over. “Were you in some sort of long term polyamorous arrangement?”

Eames laughs under him and he can feel the sound jolt through them both. “No Arthur,” he says, carding his hands through Arthur’s hair. “It’s just something that used to happen sometimes with Yusuf.”

“Sometimes,” Arthur prompts.

“A lot of sometimes,” Eames concedes.

“How often do you _menage_ with Yusuf?” Arthur asks.

“Well. Historically, when I’ve been with a lad long enough to call him a boyfriend.”

Arthur feels suddenly stiff, and unexpectedly upset. He tries not to let it show, but he must not do a very good job because Eames sounds exasperated when he says, “Is this turning into a problem?”

An hour ago, things had been fine, both of them a little drunk and horny, laughing as they’d fallen into bed. Now, Arthur is on the other side of the haze of arousal.

“No,” Arthur says, pulling his limbs back into his own space.

Eames follows his retreat. “Pet. Are you seriously going to be nasty about this?”

“Why would I be nasty about finding out that my... That you have some kind of fucked up _meet the parents_ scenario every time you find yourself a new bed partner.”

Eames frowns, sitting up. “Should I go?”

Arthur tries to get a rein on himself. It shouldn't be this hard — he's spent years maintaining a tight composure. He puts his hand on Eames' wrist. "Sorry," he says, still feeling tension in his jaw but trying to will it away. "Sorry. I just. It's always weird to hear something about a current liaisons from strangers."

"Am I looking at jealousy?" Eames says in a voice full of mocking wonder, and Arthur recoils.

"No," he says, stubborn. "I just want you to explain it to me."

“You’ve got it just about sorted, now, I suspect,” Eames says. He still looks like he might leave, like Arthur might say the wrong thing and his sympathetic nervous system will kick in and he’s Eames, he always goes with _flight_ and isn’t that Arthur’s whole fucking _life_ in a nutshell?

“So you screw someone for six months,” he says a little darkly. “And then?”

“And then I run into Yusuf and ask him if he’s got a weekend free, I suppose.” Eames’ hair is sticking up in the back, just a little, and the mess of it gets worse as Eames reaches behind his head self-consciously.

“So you’ve got a long standing appointment to have threesomes.”

“Well, when you say _appointment_ , it does make it sound a good deal stuffier than it is.”

“But essentially,” Arthur presses.

“Essentially, yes.”

“So what is he? What are the two of you?”

“We’re best mates, innit.”

“That is not typical best mate behavior,” Arthur says.

“Well,” Eames drawls, moving his eyebrows. “Maybe most blokes don’t have a best mate as mind-numbingly good in bed as Yusuf is.”

Half of Arthur wants to hide his head under his pillow, but the other half is full of morbid curiosity. Of course, that’s the same part of him that wants to dig his fingers into his own bruises on the third day after a trouncing. “Is Yusuf particularly...”

“You have no idea,” Eames says, grinning a little.

Arthur knows Yusuf. Arthur has also been sleeping with Eames for a long time. After the first four times Arthur had moved immediately post orgasm into denial and bitterness masquerading as boredom and slaked lust, but after the fifth time it had become more difficult to pull off anything but _I am here because I want to be here_ , which is mostly the truth. It was a little humiliating, but it wasn’t like you could really keep a secret from Eames for long. It was bound to come out sooner or later.

So it wasn’t that he wanted to get involved with Yusuf so much as he was sharply reminded that while he was far too interested in Eames, Eames was completely failing to do the thing that apparently meant you’d arrived in his heart.

Arthur laughs back at Eames, and moves back down, flat on his back and far enough away from Eames that he can seem like he couldn’t care less if Eames gets comfortable again, like he could take it or leave it. His gamble pays off because Eames does, although he’s further than he was the first time. Arthur’s heart pounds unevenly all night, sleep completely evading him as he lies awash in abject humiliation.

*

In the morning Eames is already gone, because he never sleeps more than four or five hours, come hell or hangover, and because his lifetime of theft, both petty and grand, has turned him into the perfect morning-after ghost.

Arthur feels embarrassed and full of cotton with his dry mouth and dry eyes. Eames could be on his way to literally anywhere in the world, or he could be down the street stealing men’s wristwatches as a morning warm-up.

Arthur gives himself a two hour timeframe to stay in his apartment before leaving: enough time that he’ll see Eames come back if he hasn’t left, not enough time to sit around like some kind of fucking sad-sack.

The city outside his window is almost as unbearably loud as the quiet in his bedroom is. At eleven, he sends himself on his way.

*

Cobb hardly works in the field anymore, but he still keeps his finger in nearly every pot. Arthur would come to him for advice with no shame if his dilemma was crime or dream psychology related.

When he met Dom, Arthur was nineteen years old and still had acne. He cannot, for the love of all that is holy, ask him for boy advice. The very thought gives him a phantom headache.

Which is not to say he doesn’t show up, because he does. Half out of old habit, and maybe more than a little bit out of revenge, Arthur shows up at his doorstep, and when Cobb comes to the door, he isn’t even armed.

“You’ve gone soft,” Arthur tells him.

Dom claps him on the arm and then thinks better of it, throwing his arms around Arthur. “I was starting to think you were never going to darken my door again,” Dom says.

“I called you less than a month ago.”

“A month,” Dom repeats, laughing. He hasn’t let him go yet. “And a phone call is not a visit.”

“I needed to let you get settled,” Arthur says, because he can’t lie to Dom; Dom is like Eames with his keen eye for people and their motivations, with the added advantage of Arthur’s mostly-down guard. While Eames might casually shred him — thoughtlessly or with intention — if he got too close, Dom Cobb can generally be trusted to be in his corner, that stretch where he lost sight of everything but clearing his name notwithstanding. It had hardly been anyone’s finest hour.

Arthur is glad to be here. With Mal gone, there was a long time where is felt like the remaining Cobb was all he had, and maybe the other way around, too, but it had been hard to come back and see the kids. They recognized him but their father, not so much, and that had left him feeling bruised and awkward to see.

Dom brings some very old alcohol out of storage, and pours them both a glass. He pauses after he’s half-filled the second one. “Sorry,” he says, reaching for something else behind his wet bar, and pulling out a glass for a new drink. “I forgot.”

“It’s fine,” Arthur says, reaching for thirty year old scotch with a sense of dread.

Dom smacks his hand down. “You don’t need to waste this beautiful bottle pretending you like to drink like an adult. I’ll make you something you like. I’ve got blueberry vodka here somewhere.”

Arthur flushes to the tips of his ears, but feels kind of nice anyway, fussed over. He half expects Dom to reach over and ruffle his hair.

There is no way for a sensible grown man to ask another grown man what he thinks his chances are to be asked to participate in a threesome with his sometimes-lover any time soon. It also wouldn’t be dignified to ask Cobb if he thinks that Yusuf has to be in love with Eames for such an arrangement to come about.

Instead, they talk about Cobb’s children and Arthur’s most recent job. The kids are with Miles for the weekend, and Arthur’s job was going pretty fucking well until it ended with the unwanted knowledge that Eames is routinely naked in the company of more than one person in a way that seems to border on ritualistic.

Of course, after Arthur learns that Dom has recently attended a Guns N Roses tribute band show, Arthur feels dangerously close to asking, because clearly the day has reached a low point. After three blueberry martinis and something that looks a bit like grenadine, peach schnapps and 7 Up but packs a lot more punch, Arthur leans back and says, “Do you know if Yusuf is pining for Eames?”

Dom looks confused. “I mean. I met him for Saito’s job. I don’t really know,” but then an unholy look creeps into his eyes and he says, “but I know how to find out.”

“We are not going to extract from a fellow member of the dreamshare community to find out his romantic status,” Arthur says, rolling his eyes.

“ _We could_ , though.” Dom presses, leaning against him. “If you need me to. I’ll do it.”

Arthur feels strangely touched. He sleeps off the following hangover — and when did he start living the life where he had to deal with two hangovers in the same week? — in Dom’s guest room, and makes the bed before he leaves. “Thanks,” he says, at the end of his stay.

Dom looks good, well fed and a little sunburned, and thumps him on the shoulder. “I meant what I said the other night,” he says, cracking a grin. Dom’s self conscious smile is probably eighty-five percent responsible for Arthur’s adolescent crush on him, “You saved my ass enough times, you know, when we were… _anyways_. I’ll extract the hell out of Yusuf if you need me to. Fuck, I’ll incept him into discontinuing their friendship if you need me to get him to back off.”

“Jeez, Dom,” Arthur says, giving a startled laugh. “You’re fucking unhinged and somehow I am weirdly flattered. Please do not do that insane thing.”

“That’s what I’ve got you for,” Dom says, still smiling.

“I’ll be back,” Arthur says. “I won’t wait so long.”

*

The thing about Eames is that Arthur knows it isn’t real between them, Arthur has nothing that Eames wants except a convenient way to spend an afternoon if they happen to be in the same city, but the way he goes about it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. He’d thought he’d only have to be with him once or twice to kill his desire for him.

Arthur has historically been able to quell unnecessary attraction by letting the objects of it fumble with his cumbersome body, which is skittish and difficult to navigate at the best of times. Men are always impatient with the amount of foreplay he wants or how much prep he requires. It’s one of the reasons it took so long for him to come to terms with his bisexuality. He likes sex with women. A woman, even one he is having only casual encounters with, has never teased him for his tendency towards the affectionate or the careful in bed. It took longer for him to figure out why he was attracted to men but never seemed to be able to have satisfying encounters with them.

Since coming to the realization about himself and his needs, for the most part, when Arthur is lonely for that sort of companionship, he generally picks up young twinkish guys, slouching against hipster bars like he himself did at twenty.

No one ever took him home in those days, spending half an hour grinding against him before they peeled him out of his jeans, kissing the soft curve of his stomach while they were down there. He might have figured it out sooner, if someone had.

Eames was someone he worked with and sometimes fought with, and almost as soon as Arthur realized that he was beyond attraction, that the chemistry he felt was tempered by grudging respect, the need for immediate intervention has seemed obvious. Arthur thought he’d let Eames fuck him, and in the morning, sore and unhappy, he’d be able to get it out of his head.

Eames, in his characteristic chaos, completely defied Arthur’s expectation.

Which is to say, Eames doesn’t just  _fuck_ Arthur. Arthur takes Eames home after that first job, when Arthur had spent less time rolling his eyes at Eames makes sure to get caught giving him an appreciative glance on the last day. While Arthur coiled up the lines of the PASIV, Eames moved behind him to put two fingers in one of his belt loop, and instead of moving away, Arthur had said, “Yeah,” and then, “I have a room in town.”

Arthur had thought, _well, that’s sorted now_.

Of course, nothing in Arthur’s life goes how he plans it when he comes to Eames, and instead of getting awkwardly thumped around for half an hour as he’d visualized, Eames was stupidly charming, putting his nose behind Arthur’s ear and his lips on Arthur’s shoulder blade.

Eames, _fuck him_ , doesn’t treat Arthur like a way to have an orgasm on an afternoon he finds unexpectedly unscheduled; he treats him like a boyfriend. He lets his eyes track him in public when they’re working together, he gives him friendly leers when Arthur crouches and flicks him on the neck on the way past him in shared spaces. He kisses him, languid and unhurried, and goes about the careful task of fingering Arthur open with sweet, unhurried motions, giving his cock gentle, silly, pecking kisses while he does. And then he fucks off to God knows where for six weeks.

 _That_ is why Arthur half-hates Eames, who can look at a person and know what they want, who can give it to him in half measures, keep him feeling off balance and needy when he’s out of his life, and happier than he’s ever been when he’s in his orbit.

The whole thing screws with Arthur’s head.

*

Three weeks later, a job rolls his way. In a strange blast from the past, the call comes from Cobb, actually.

“Hey,” he says. “I’ve got something for you.”

Arthur is reimagining his week before he ever gets to the details, because old habits die hard. “Thanks,” he says. “I’ll call up Kristoff.”

Eventually, Arthur thinks, Dom Cobb is going to be back in the field. He’s too good at it, knows too much to stay away forever. Maybe when his grief feels as hidden as an old scar, no longer pulsing near the surface, he’ll come out of hiding. Today isn’t that day, although Arthur double checks just to be certain.

They go into the dreams of Mischa Orlov, in his own office, maps of his land tracks spread on every available surface. They’d debated using a forge, but as far as Arthur could see, there was no right hand officer, no man on the ground that Mischa trusted with his life, no young child that he’d be prone to answering questions for.

Instead, Arthur sets up security cameras. Of course, it has to be Arthur because for technology to work, really work in a functional way in a dream, _someone_ has to thoroughly understand how it works. Some things work because everyone expects them to, the mark and the team, like cell phones, or a TV, its image low-fi but present, because the brain will create white noise for it. Security cameras, secret security cameras, cannot rely on Mischa’s assumption that the cameras are rolling, because he can’t know that they are, hence, Arthur, on his hands and knees, actually wiring them.

The job goes off seamlessly, two levels deep with Arthur watching security footage from a van while Orlov examines the map, pinning off sites exactly like he’d hoped.

After, Arthur nods at Kristoff and Leilani, Pilar, a rectangular shaped architect he’s never worked with but who he knows by reputation. He gets startled at the airport, feeling the familiar lurch of someone’s eyes on his back. He flies out, circuitous routes, taking a full four days to get back to LA, after he’s sure he’s lost his tail.

*

Motherfucking Eames is in his house.

Part of Arthur wants to turn around as soon as he knows (before he’s entered the house, of course, because this isn’t his first rodeo.) but the rest of him is exhausted and sore and knows that if he crosses the threshold, it will only be a matter of time before Eames has both palms on his hips, steering him sleepily down and not taking anything from him. Eames, as callous as he is when he’s not trying, actively _adds_ to Arthur.

Half resigned and half glad, he opens the front door.

“Darling,” Eames says. He’s smiling, not sly or malicious or even particularly cheeky. Arthur should turn around. He would if he had any sense. Instead, he slinks indoors, dropping his bag just inside and deadbolting the door behind himself.

“Eames,” Arthur says. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Eames does not disappoint. Eames is in front of him in short order, reeling him in. “No,” Arthur protests, “I’m disgusting.”

“You do smell a little bit like plane detour,” Eames acknowledges. “Go get in the shower.”

“I think—” he starts to say, but Eames cuts him off with a friendly squeeze to his backside.

“Go on,” he says, amused, “do as you’re told.”

Arthur does as he’s told. The hot water in his truly magnificent shower peels days of exhaustion off of his skin, leaves him feeling tired but content, and he puts on a t-shirt and sweatpants before he goes out to find Eames, who has made himself at home in front of Arthur’s massive TV.

Eames leers up at him, patting his own lap. “In your dreams,” he mutters, but sits down beside him anyways.

“Heard you were on a job with Kristoff,” Eames says, by way of conversation, wrapping his arm around the back of Arthur’s shoulders.

Arthur gives a noncommittal hum.

“And Pilar,” Eames goes on.

Arthur is tired, and just finally sloughing off a week of chill and discomfort. He’s not sure what direction Eames is trying to prod the conversation into, and he certainly doesn’t want to fight. “Yes,” he confirms, uneasy.

Eames doesn’t say anything after that, goes back to watching what seems to be a nature documentary, a commercial for _Deadliest Catch_ coming on right after Eames turns his attention back to the screen, and Eames gives that his complete focus, too.

“There was some mention of trouble.”

A relieved laugh bubbles out of Arthur’s chest. Eames was _worried_ about him. “I don’t think I’m worried about it. I’m going to keep my head down for a little while though.”

“In that case,” Eames says, hoisting him in, putting one warm hand at the back of his neck and moving towards him, close and warm. Eames slides his mouth over Arthur’s, a lazy blur of skin, Eames’ thumb resting against the collar of his shirt.

Arthur goes willingly, crumbling against Eames, who rarely fails him when it comes to physical affection or to friction. He lets himself be swept up in the bulk of Eames’ biceps and holds tight to Eames’ shoulders while he plies him with kisses, hot and slick and clearly amused.

Eames works off his shirt, pressing the tip of his thumb to Arthur’s nipple. “There’s a love,” Eames says, and Arthur realizes that somehow he’s been maneuvered onto his back. Eames dips his hand into Arthur’s sweats, petting the skin of his pelvis but skirting his cock. Arthur rubs down the side of Eames’ ribs above him, drinking in the thick gentle slope of the muscles of his torso. Even in a casual pose it is so easy to tell how muscular he is.

Eames lays Arthur down and presses him into the fabric of his own couch, powerful but patient, one hand running down his side. He works himself out of his own trousers, barely pausing his kissing to do it.

Arthur arches up to follow him. Eames seems to have been busy earlier stashing travel-sized bottles of lube in his couch, because he pulls one out now.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Eames says, pouring some onto his fingertips. Arthur expects to feel them in short order between his legs, but instead, Eames adjusts himself to reach between his own.

“Oh,” he says, in a nervous rush. “no, I don’t. I mean, that’s fine.”

He stops talking, then, in favor of trying to keep his breathing under control while Eames lowers himself down onto him. Arthur wraps both hands around the length of Eames, keeps them still while Eames rocks upwards into the snug wrap of his hands and back onto his cock.

They come, messily, and Eames sends him off to bed and promises to make sure his couch is tidy before he follows.

*

In the morning, Eames is sprawled across half the bed in his boxers, mouth hanging open and thighs lax. He is snoring a little bit. Arthur has never heard the sound of it, and he feels flushed with triumph about it.

Arthur sidles against him, a little guilty, maneuvering himself under Eames’ extended arm.

Eames is good when he’s in the room. Eames teases him and cuddles with him and on more than one memorable occasion, has made him a really stellar morning-after breakfast.

Arthur, because he is a criminal, and has an erosion of boundaries in the last decade since he started poking around in people’s brains, has a thought, that he could go into Eames’ thoughts. Eames always accuses him of being stuffy and inflexible but he’s creative enough when it comes to jobs: he could paint his own name across the asphalt and pave over it with cobblestones, kiss projections until they all know him, use his skills acquired as a point man to systematically work through anything that might make Eames love him.

Which is clearly an insane thought. He is just as unhinged as Cobb. What an embarrassing thing to be aware of.

Eames spends another two days in the apartment. They fight about best practice for getting a mark to build some of his own landscapes. Eames tells him about Rita, the extracter they worked with on the last job they both took, tells Arthur the story of the time she was posing as an escort and she’d fellated the mark while the sleeping pill in his Phil Collins took effect. Arthur tells him that Cobb seems more solid every time he talks to him, and Eames seems genuinely glad.

They don’t have sex again during his stay, but he does pull Arthur down to nap on top of him during a Harry Potter marathon. Arthur isn’t a teenaged girl; he’s a full grown man and there is no way Eames is comfortable underneath him, but when Arthur goes to move, Eames keeps a grip on him with a hand inside each back pocket so Arthur stays put through The Goblet of Fire.

*

Of course, the only sensible thing to do is to visit Yusuf.

Arthur has been in Yusuf’s dream den before. They’d met on a job a year before the Fischer operation. In a way, all those people hooked up to machines discomfits him, but he’s seen other spaces like this and he dislikes Yusuf’s the least, with his full time staff and the faint scent of cleaning supplies. When he was there the last time, no one sprawled across a cot seemed to be visibly atrophied, which kept his growing nausea at bay.

Now, waiting in the front room of Yusuf’s shop, he is reminded of that last visit, before Eames lived in Mombasa, when he’d needed a formulation he wasn’t sure could be made.

Of course, it had cost him an arm and a leg, but the mix had done exactly what Yusuf said it would, and unlike plenty of other encounters Arthur had been though with other chemists, Arthur hadn’t felt intimidated or repulsed by the man in question.

“A pleasure doing business with you,” Arthur had said, his hand clasped around Yusuf’s and he’d smiled back, attractive and easy. He’d been relieved to find out that Yusuf was in charge of the Somnacin mix for the Fischer job. Glad, even.

Now, he’s not sure what to think.

He’s not great at getting a read off of people. He didn’t expect that he’d arrive and Yusuf would be wearing a sign that said _I’m in Love With Eames_ but he’d expected something to fall into place.

“Arthur,” Yusuf rumbles, after his underaged front-desk boy scurried downstairs to grab him. “A pleasure to find you at my doorstep.”

“Likewise,” Arthur said, inclining his head. Yusuf, for what it’s worth, is not glaring at him like he’s the one thing between him and true happiness, so he supposes there’s that.

“Can I help you with something specific,” Yusuf says, getting down to business, but still sounding friendly, “or can I show you something I’m working on?”

The part of him that got his undergrad in biology, back when he’d thought he was on the premed track, reflexively wants to ask about how many times it’s been tested. The rest of him is a criminal who lives life a little more dangerously than he did as an undergrad, and he trusts Yusuf enough to crack a smile. “What have you got for me?”

He goes under with Yusuf.

When he comes back up, he wants to know, “What the fuck was that?”

“That’s Somnacin synthesized with a mild hallucinogen,” Yusuf explains, with shining eyes. “I’ve been trying to replicate something closer to natural dreaming, that keeps the dreamer from getting suspicious.”

“That’s good shit,” Arthur says, rubbing at the crook of his elbow. “What are you experiencing with it so far?”

“Little recollection afterwards, and none of the mind’s rejection of dreams set in reality but allow bending of the rules of physics or science.”

“Keep me posted about that,” Arthur says. It’s not what he’s come for, but it’ll be dead useful when Yusuf gets all the kinks worked out. “Added susceptibility to suggestion?”

“Not as much as you’d think,” Yusuf says. “I haven’t pinpointed why not just yet.”

Arthur nods. “Fair enough.”

Now that he’s here, he doesn’t know what to do. For just a second, he regrets turning down Dom’s offer. He could be rooting around in Yusuf’s brain looking for projections of Eames that were exaggeratedly handsome, which was a good tell when you were looking for attraction. His own projection of Eames looked just like Eames, but Arthur was an idiot, and thought even Eames’ imperfections made him seem untouchably, inhumanly hot. And it could be subtle: Yusuf’s projection of Eames might have been an inch or two taller.

He shoots the breeze with him for a while, before he arrives at the realization that he shouldn’t have come if he wasn’t prepared to violate Yusuf’s privacy. Now he was going to go home with no clearer thought than he’d had, and of course, it would immediately get back to Eames that he’d been poking around.

He buys Somnacin, enough that it would seem appropriate for him to come all the way out for product he wouldn’t have to worry about, but not more than he could safely get across customs with.

“Take care,” he tells him, turning to leave.

“Arthur,” Yusuf says, quiet. Arthur feels dread coalescing in his stomach, hot and sick as he turns to see him. “Are you in town for Eames?”

“No,” Arthur says, not lying, but somehow feeling like he is.

Yusuf doesn’t look like he thinks Arthur is lying; he looks _disappointed_ that Arthur is telling the truth. “Alright, my friend,” he says, tentative hope in his eyes fading, and Arthur leaves more puzzled than he came.

*

Arthur is actively looking for ways to engineer a job scenario where he gets to bring in Eames. Disgusted with himself for the level of miserable sad-sack he has devolved into, he sends him a text message. _Going rate on new passport?_ Arthur asks him, because he’s not yet sunk to the level where he’s desperate enough to say _Please come have sex with me._

Eames leaves him hanging a long time while Arthur stares at his phone, wishing already that he could take it back. Finally, it rings. “Hullo darling,” Eames says, velvet voice plush in his head.

“Eames,” Arthur says.

“You know I always take care of your international needs,” Eames says.

Arthur has to think about it. He realizes rather quickly that Eames isn’t wrong. He has taken care of his last several pieces of identification. “Meet me somewhere interesting and we can talk about it.”

“You could meet me for once,” Eames drawls, and Arthur feels his heart give a painful kick at Eames attempting to act like Arthur’s one playing unfairly. He thinks he can just tease and tease Arthur, to give him little slices of what he wants before dancing out of his reach, mock him across thousands of miles like _Arthur_ is the one who is the one who can’t be pinned down.

Well. Arthur is going to call him on his bluff, this time.

With a flare of heat from his gut to his brain, Arthur does a very stupid thing: “Stay put,” he says. “I’ll come find you.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A massive thanks to Motetus who helped chip away the ugly bits of this story. She is a delight. :)

Arthur has been known to make poor decisions in his romantic life. He's had three serious relationships, but none since he's started dreamsharing. None with men, ever.

To be honest, he might never have pursued male companionship had Dom not caught him at a young age, after he’d had sex with a man for the first time, but before he’d given up completely on the whole unsatisfying ordeal.

Of course, Dom was never actually interested in that way. But he had been lazily affectionate with him in a way that had sparked up and down the pleasure center of his brain like something feral and untamed, and Arthur had thought _oh_.

Now, his feet feel heavy in his shoes, at a level of panic that actual gunfire has long ceased to invoke. It only gets worse the closer he gets to Eames with no guarantee about his welcome.

*

It doesn’t take much for Arthur to find him. Eames is holed up in Chile, in an area Arthur is familiar with. (To be honest, it’s more than somewhere he knows, and more somewhere he _really likes_.) He doesn’t know to what extent Eames knows that because Eames’ M.O. is to know a _lot_ about people, and to draw startlingly accurate conclusions to cover the gaps in his knowledge.

Eames might have long distance DSLR shots of Arthur near Cerro Santa Lucia, or he might have made a guess based on the weather. If Eames has proven anything this year, it is that he knows what Arthur likes.

Arthur knocks sharply on the front door.

Eames lets him inside, but not very far, tucking his revolver back into his waistband.

“This place,” Arthur says.

Eames inclines his head. “Yeah,” he says.

“It looks like you,” Arthur presses. “Like you _live here_.”

“I do, sometimes.”

There is an ugly ceramic ashtray on a low table behind Eames. It looks homemade, as if by a child. Arthur looks pointedly at it.

“I live here a lot,” Eames admits.

Arthur is standing in Eames’ house. Eames asked Arthur to come, and Arthur is still a little confused about what exactly he meant by it, but it has to mean something. “Thanks for the invitation,” Arthur says.

“You didn’t really pack for a visit,” Eames says, gesturing to Arthur’s empty hands.

“I didn’t really know you were going to be here,” he says, flushing. “It’s possible I have a hotel room, just in case.”

“Of course you do,” Eames says.

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”

Eames lifts his shoulders in a lazy shrug. He’s not wearing a shirt, the fuzzy edges of his ink looking stupidly good against his skin, vacation brown and utterly mouthwatering. He leans in, because he wants to, and deposits a kiss on his petulant mouth. He accepts it, doesn’t duck away.   
  
“I brought corn pie, actually,” Arthur says, and barks out a laugh when Eames looks around hopefully. “I had to give it to a little punk on the way over though.”

“Did you get mugged, darling?” Eames asks, looking outright delighted.

“No,” Arthur says, elbowing past him, and lowers his voice, “he just looked fucking pitiful.”

Eames barks out a dry laugh and lets him by.

Eames has his hackles up for a while. This is unusual. Eames has been invading Arthur’s space for months, mostly during and after jobs. He’s certainly never been tense like this.

“Are you alright?” Arthur asks.

“Yeah,” Eames shrugs, his face pinched, and puts his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, drags him back in.

Eames’ mouth is sweet against his, moving in a way he hadn’t, earlier, when Arthur had gone in and he’d been subdued but stiff. Arthur is glad for the change. There is a knot in his chest, painful and tight.

Eames puts a hand behind Arthur’s head, giving him a quick scratch behind the ear, and just imaging all the steps Eames is sure to lead them through is enough to get Arthur’s heart thumping uneven in his chest. Arthur touches Eames’ bottom lip with his tongue, swipes across it and moves against him, the faintest scrape of teeth and the suction of a breathless kiss and Arthur can feel Eames’ pulse through the plane of their chests, pulled flush.

Between the two of them, only Arthur is wearing a shirt.

Arthur works his hands into the tight space of Eames’ trousers without working them off.

Eames goes from being half hard to being all in after a few moments, tucked in the palm of Arthur’s hand, arching his hips into Arthur’s grip, and Arthur flushes with the headiness of it. Eames is all touch, handsy, and Arthur loves that about him; Eames puts his fingertips everywhere, from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine, stuttering over his hip when Arthur gets his cock firmly in his hand.

“For an art thief,” Arthur says, smiling against Eames’ mouth, “you’re not concerned with leaving fingerprints.”

“You’re not something I can steal, petal,” Eames says, putting his fingers to Arthur’s mouth, brushing a finger across his damp bottom lip. Arthur’s throat constricts a little painfully.

Eames stills his hand, wrapping his fingers around Arthur’s wrist. “Come on,” Eames says. “We have time to do this properly.”

Seeing Eames' room for the first time — or at least, an actual space that Eames sometimes considers such — is a touch anticlimactic, but Arthur is glad for it. There are no pictures on the wall, but one of the walls is a pale yellow, demure and classy, with an old fashioned dark wood vanity against it. There is a nice tie hanging on the back of a chair and Eames’ pocket watch, large and brass, sits on the bedside table, acting as a paperweight for a half-dozen sheets of paper.

Arthur has seen Eames take over a lease with six months left on a long-con, and it had never looked even remotely lived in.

“Are you done?” Eames says, touching Arthur’s chin and bringing himself back into Arthur’s line of sight.

“Yeah, sorry,” Arthur says. Eames picks up where they left off, which is to say that Eames _literally_ picks him up and deposits him on the bed, where Arthur makes an embarrassing rebound. Eames moves down, hovering over him, and Arthur feels caged in — not trapped, but safely contained. Sex, in his history, has often felt wildly out of control. It hits him, not for the first time, that he has never trusted a bed partner to keep him safe like he trusts Eames.

Eames’ position puts Arthur in eyereach of the two tattoos Arthur is most curious about — one, golden-red and painted with impressionist brushwork and the other, handwritten script: _sicker dogs_. A lot of the others are interesting enough, the coastline of Ireland in a thin outline, a compass with a south-pointing needle, the small paper plane on his shoulder, but it is the two by his heart that Arthur is most curious about. Sometimes he thinks that what he knows about Eames could fit in his clay ashtray, and the ashtray would still be functional.

“Quiet, you,” Eames says, like he can hear Arthur’s racing thoughts, and leans down to press his bristly mouth against the paper-thin skin of his eyelid, and then the other.

Arthur holds on, swallowing a whimper, fingertips digging into Eames’ shoulders while he maneuveres him out of his shirt one button at a time, touching the flushed skin of his chest when it emerges. Eames presses him so sweetly, and it is such a heady place to be, crushed beneath his bulk, a pair of straining cocks between them.

Arthur moves them, gets Eames on his back. He doesn’t tease, sparing only a moment to eyeball the rigid length of Eames before he works it into his mouth. “Unf,” he vocalizes around Eames’ cock, as if it’s the most electric thing that’s ever happened to him. Eames puts his hands in Arthur’s hair, and Arthur muscles down, down, until his bottom lip touches the base, stubble brushing his inner thighs. He holds Eames leg at an angle, cradling his wide thigh in the crook of his arm.

“Arthur,” Eames says, in a broken voice. When Arthur looks up, Eames has his face buried in his own elbow, his mouth bitten red and folded into an unquantifiable expression. Arthur sets himself back to his task, and blames a stray tear on his battered soft palate.

*

By the fourth or fifth time they’d had sex, Arthur was already dangerously aware that Eames was the best bedmate he’d ever had. Part of him was fucking _thrilled_ because at any moment, by far the hottest man he’d ever met could arrive at his doorstep, wherever he was at that moment, and take over his life for a few days.

The other half of him was steeped in anxiety that suddenly Eames had so much power over him, and clearly he knew it. It was humiliating, and he oscillated constantly between the satisfaction he felt in the lazy muscles of his lower back after Eames was done with him for the evening and the shame he felt, when Eames close the door behind himself.

Eight months later and Arthur is still balanced on those opposites, mortified and ecstatic in turns. With Eames’ face pressed close against the curve of his neck, with just enough stubble to make Arthur feel ticklish, it is easy to pick one.

Weightless. He feels weightless, amused and well cared for. If he thinks about it too long though, he remembers that in the next few days Eames will be done with him. Given that he has chased Eames down this time, one of two things will happen. The first is that Eames will actually ask him to leave, and the second is that Eames, ready to shuck him, will actually move forward, leaving Arthur behind in his house, hoping he’ll eventually take the hint.

Arthur resolutely tries not to think about it.

They don’t leave Eames’ bed until late afternoon.

*

“So. You were in Mombasa,” Eames finally says, over dinner.

Arthur spears vegetables like they’ve personally offended him, five, six little jabs before he puts them in his mouth. He’d thought maybe, maybe he’d gotten away with it. “Yeah,” he says, swallowing. “I needed to get a good blend, so I went to see Yusuf.”

“Hm,” Eames says, drumming his fingertips on the table listlessly.

Eames has the most expressive forehead of anyone Arthur knows. It folds up, now, with neat pleats for dramatic effect, like a stage curtain. Arthur’s stomach is already cramping with anticipation by the time Eames says, “I don’t think we should do this anymore.”

The muscles in Arthur’s throat constrict. He has to swallow, hard, before he can grind out: “Do what?”

Eames waves a hand in the empty space between them.

Arthur shouldn’t have come here. He’s showed his hand, and it wasn’t the winning one. Arthur’s mind taunts him immediately with the thought of how long he could have had Eames, in whatever part-time capacity Eames liked to be had, if he hadn’t shown up on his doorstep like some kind of needy adolescent. Being Eames’ sometimes-companion has become the best part of his life for the last year. It’s certainly the most successful physical experiment he’s ever had.

Arthur must look crazy-eyed, because Eames graces him with a soft frown. “I know the sex is good, love, but I can’t seem to get us on the same page, and frankly, it’s a little embarrassing.”

It’s not like Arthur has much pride left. It only takes a moment to decide to swallow the last tatters, and they go down like glass. “Don’t,” he says, a little rough, “I’ll do...”

 _Anything_. Arthur realizes with a dull horror that he is about to say _anything_. Maybe Eames knows it, too: he levels a look at him, disdainful. It hits him low in the solar plexus. “Stop it, pigeon.”

“Just,” Arthur says. He probably sounds desperate. “We can tone it down. We can — you can just fuck me, you know?”

Eames’ face goes stormy, which was the opposite of what he’d expected. He wants to throw himself on the floor and have a tantrum with the broad, slamming weight of everything being so _utterly unfair_. Arthur’s head is still spinning when Eames says: "You can't have it both ways. It's cheating."

Arthur's brain catches on the word. _Cheating_. “What?” he barks, because he’s not the one, he’s not the one off having sexy threesomes with a man who is, by his own admission, mind-numbingly good in bed. Which isn’t _cheating_ , and Eames has made no commitment to him anyways, so it wouldn’t be even if he’d left Arthur after that dazzling night in XinXu to go directly to Yusuf.

“You know what I mean,” Eames says, huffing. “I don’t blame you. I’ve been there — it’s nice to have sex with someone who is totally gone on you, but you clearly don’t want anything from me but to be petted, and yet here you are. And then you brought Yusuf into it.”

“That’s—” Arthur says, fucking _floored_. “None of that is accurate.”

“No?” Eames asks. His voice is a bit dangerous. “Which parts have I got wrong, then?”

“Totally gone,” Arthur wheezes. “You’re not.”

“A strange piece of information to contest, to be sure,” Eames says.

“You’re not!” Arthur says, sharp. “You — you’ve always just come around, taken what you wanted and left when you were through.”

“What I want,” Eames says, bitter. “Sure.” Eames looks down at his own hands on the table, one of them curled into a fist. “I think you should probably leave now.”

Arthur’s heart gives him a steady, sharp pain, like there’s been some sort of misunderstanding and all of the valves in his heart are flowing backwards. “Wait,” he says. “Not until we have this fight. Or — not until you let me say what I want.”

Eames hand opens and closes. His mouth is still bitten and gorgeous, the way Arthur left it. It sparks him with courage. There isn’t a whole lot he wouldn’t do for a chance to scrape his teeth along that bottom lip again. “I came here because I don’t like being left behind.” Eames doesn’t stop him, so Arthur goes on, feeling a little choked with shame: “And I don’t know how you came to the conclusion that you’re the one that wants more, because you’re always dancing out of my reach.”

Eames stands, looking down like he’s not sure if he can trust the ground to hold him, even the wobbly line of his bare shoulders unsure. “You were pretty obviously trying to have sex with me to get me out of your system.”

Arthur can’t deny that; Eames’ ability to read people is nearly unfaltering. “If you knew that … you still went along with it.”

“Well, if you must know, it seemed a bit like an audition.”

Arthur feels his forehead wrinkle. “You mean a challenge?”

“No, you spiteful, paranoid fuck. I said what I meant. I thought I’d give it an honest effort and maybe that would convince you to do the same.”

“Oh,” Arthur says.

Eames makes a scoffing noise. “I was hardly subtle.”

Arthur feels inadmissibly stupid for a man who collects details. Of course he’d seen what Eames was doing, he’d thought it often enough: Eames acted like his fucking _boyfriend_. It was only that he’d assigned him the wrong motivation — that Eames wasn’t being fair to Arthur, that he’d seen Arthur’s hunger for affection and turned it against him, _used him_. Plenty of times he’d imagined Eames, out of sight, amused with the havoc he left in his wake.

The alternate explanation, that Eames feels similarly discarded, that they’ve both stayed out of each other’s way in the in-between time to keep from stifling the other, is too ridiculous to fathom. “The way you were,” he says, feeling his face flush, thinking of every time Eames had curled around him like a body pillow, “It seemed like you were teasing me.”

“You know a lot of men, then, who fly across the world for you on a lark?”

“No,” Arthur says. “Just the one, I thought.”

Eames moves to touch him, finally, pressing one hand against Arthur’s hot cheek. “What kind of fucked up game did you think I was playing?”

*

In Hanoi Eames kept trying to get his hands down Arthur’s trunks in the hotel pool. Arthur was there trying to unwind after a job and Eames showed up and fit in so seamlessly, like he did everywhere. Arthur had thought, if he fell into limbo, had to live it out for years and years, this is what he’d invent. Eames, half lit by streetlights and stars, his wet skin and laughing eyes.

At one point he’d picked Arthur up over the broad spread of one shoulder and threatened to tip him off the bridge and into the lake, amused and powerful. He’d bulked up for the job he’d worked before and Arthur couldn’t stop looking at the way he seemed to inhabit his body differently,

Arthur had thought that he’d always second guess himself in Vietnam, from then on, always half-suspicious that he’d gone off the deep end and decided to give himself what he wanted most in the world.

He thinks of that hotel room, now, how he’d brushed one finger up and down the length of the vivid orange of Eames’ feather tattoo.

“What’s the feather mean?”

“Wheat,” Eames had said, absently.

Arthur looked down at it, surprised. Now that Eames had pointed it out, he could see it. “Wheat?” he clarified.

“Wheat is wheat, isn’t it?” Eames said, and Arthur closed his eyes, thinking. Outside his window, the ocean purred in and out like a restless machine, and Arthur fell asleep with his hand pinned under Eames’ shoulder.  

He’d thought Eames was being pithy, then. Telling him he was looking too deep for something simple, but later he’d done an internet search for all sorts of variations — _wheat symbolism_ , he’d typed out, _wheat is wheat, wheat art, wheat impressionism._

He’d tapped out variations of search terms until wheat was no longer a real word, until he’d stumbled upon it.

He thinks about that now, looking at the stubbled curve of Eames’ jaw, his face a little open and a little hopeful. _I’m sorry,_ Arthur thinks, _I’m sorry I mistook it for grass._

*

Arthur takes a long time to get his bag from his hotel. He needs processing time. He repacks his toiletries, which are the only thing he’d pulled out on arrival. Arthur is a man of simple luxuries, and a scalding shower after a long flight is one he tries not to deny himself.

On the way back, he digs his fingernails into his own thighs, staring out the window. He’s still thrumming with nervous energy; he’s a little out of sorts, between taking a gamble to find Eames and being broken up with and getting together — actually together, he assumes — in the same terrible conversation.

When he opens the front door without knocking, Eames’ face immediately jumps into very serious lines. “Sit,” he demands, and Arthur compromises his dignity in order to scramble to obey, leaving his bags at the door.

Eames has a pile of papers in front of him, neatly shredded into squares. There is a short utility knife laying on its side at his elbow.

Arthur squints at the stack of papers. “No,” Eames says, slapping his hand down to cover them. “Your full attention, please.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows and stares at Eames to let him know that yes, he has his attention. At some point in the last hour, Eames has put on a white t-shirt, and Arthur can still see the outline of several of his darker tattoos through the worn material.

“Well,” Arthur says, after a prolonged silence. “You have the floor.”

“Good,” Eames says, shuffling with his papers, roughly index-card sized. “We’re going to talk about some normal human behaviors, because you are clearly broken. Keep up with me, because there will most definitely be a quiz.”

Arthur lets out a huff of breath, but Eames silences him with a look. He holds up a card that says _kisses that do not involve tongue._ “Generally a sign of romantic interest.”

“Okay,” Arthur says. “I was misguided. I get the joke. Can we—”

“No we can not,” Eames says, emphatic and cheerfully. “Sit your gorgeous bottom back down, because you’re going to learn lots of interesting things.”

Arthur crosses his hands over his chest as Eames picks up the next card. _gifts that require overnight shipping,_ and Arthur’s mouth twitches up.

Looking at Eames, he doesn’t seem snide. The fact that Arthur is well aware, now, of the damage he’s done, himself, makes it easier to stomach this lecture and to take it in good humor. The next card says _Vietnam getaways._ “Also a signal of romantic intent.”

“I get it,” Arthur grouses. “You were obvious and I was stupid.”

“I think we should go through the whole list, to be sure,” Eames says, squinting.

Arthur picks up the stack, flicking through them. “Consider them internalized. I solemnly swear never to misinterpret — wait a second. You started these over.”

“Yes, well, seven or eight signs of enormous romantic interest including, you know, clear flirtation and international red eye flights do not actually look enormous when put in a stack.” Eames says.

“Also, I notice there’s no _invitation to threesome_ card here,” Arthur says archly.

“Of course there isn’t.” Eames scoffs. “You’re old fashioned and you didn’t really like me, but put up with me because you like petting and eyebrow kisses. It was hardly going to win you over.”

“No,” Arthur says. “I liked you fine, I just thought I would like you less after we had sex.”

“Flattering.”

“And I’m not old fashioned.”

“You certainly threw a tiff the first time you heard I’d been in my fair share of threesomes,” Eames says, but then frowns. “Not that I’m trying to fight. I mean, I just got you to admit that you _liked me fine_. I feel the dam is about to rupture. Surely a song is coming.”

“I like you better than fine,” Arthur says, which isn’t all he has to say on the subject, but he’s not trying to sprain something.

“Shall we shelve discussion, then, on such a lovely note?” Eames says, and Arthur considers it: sinking into the silky folds of Eames’ wide bed, sprawling on Eames’ chest and for the first time not counting down with dread the moment that Arthur will blink and Eames will leave.

“Yes,” he says, “no. I think I’ve had enough emotional conversation for about a year, so I want to say this now and then we can go back to _not_ doing this for a long time: that night in LA, after we wrapped up the job on Theodore Inch. I was upset because I’d finally found out that you _do_ make commitments. When you said you have encounters with Yusuf after you call someone a boyfriend.”

Eames laughs. “There is so much wrong with you. I think I am supposed to keep you forever. Who else is going to protect you from yourself?”

Arthur shoves against his shoulder with the flat of his palm. The solid wall of Eames doesn’t really move, but it’s the thought that counts.

Eames wraps his arms around Arthur, pulling him in too hard. Arthur’s face squashes against Eames’ chest. “You got your feelings hurt because you’d never been invited to a threesome with Yusuf and I.” Eames is still intermittently laughing, and Arthur can feel it reverberating in his own head. “It’s the first time my complete monogamy has convinced a man of my disinterest.”

“Put me down,” Arthur says, it comes out smushed against Eames.

*

Eames is ridiculous.

Arthur, free of the emotionally draining preconception that Eames is playing some sort of sick romantic cat and mouse game with him, is free to feel utterly delighted when Eames gets them horizontal.

He doesn’t feel self conscious when he rolls them over, pinning Eames between his thighs and sitting on his hips. “You like me,” Arthur informs him, smirking down.

Eames presses his thumb to Arthur’s bottom lip. “Top marks,” he says.

Arthur leans down to kiss him, hungry and sure, grinding down with his hips and shuddering a little at the feeling of Eames hard beneath him, even through layers.

Arthur tugs off his trousers and his underpants in the same efficient motion, palms him quickly before Eames opens the angle of his legs. “Would you like to,” he offers, arching.

“Yes,” Arthur says. He plants a kiss at Eames navel while he reaches for the bottle, carefully wetting his finger and starting with one careful slide inside, fluttering with slow motions and whispering past his prostate.

“Easy killer,” Eames says, and Arthur looks at him, eyes wide.

He stills instantly. “Sorry!” he says.

Eames laughs. “I’m just teasing. You’re always precious when you do this.”

“Precious,” Arthur repeats, darkly. He gives Eames’ cock a flick.

“Alright, you’ve made your point, you’re completely ruthless. Now back to the task at hand, fi you please.”

Arthur obliges with a scrape of his teeth to the inside of Eames’ knee.  

*

Arthur goes to see Dom. When he leaves, Eames kisses him on the temple and tells him to _drive safe_.

Arthur's flight goes on and on. He doesn't miss Eames yet, but he _could_ if he wanted to. He pulls out his phone to turn it off, but wastes a few minutes thumbing through his camera roll, finding Eames has taken dozens of pictures of himself. He is smiling when he finally shuts it down, only belatedly thinking about the likelihood that he could have been innocently flipping through his pictures and run into a snap of Eames' dick.

He makes a mental note to do a thorough check before he lets Philippa look through his apps.

Dom has his PASIV out when Arthur gets there. Not out on the living room floor, but it’s accessible enough from the study that it’s obviously been brought out recently.

Arthur feels a curl of dread looking at it. Remembers Mal, a ghost turned malicious in Dom’s mixed up mind, and Dom keeping her alive in his spare hours.

“I’ve been thinking about going to back to work,” Dom says, a little defensive.

“Oh,” Arthur says. “Well. You keep me posted.”

“Of course,” Dom says, shoulders smoothing out now that it’s clear that Arthur has no judgement. “You’re the only one I want running point.”

They spar before the kids get home. Dom is out of practice, getting soft, and Arthur brings him down easier than he ever has.

“Woah,” he says, tapping out. Arthur sits beside him, panting a little, when Dom reaches over to touch his neck.

“What’s this,” Dom says, poking at his neck.

“You know what that is,” Arthur says ruefully, and gives Dom a quick punch under the armpit.

“I thought you’d given up casual,” Dom says.

Arthur scratches the back of his neck. “I did.” Dom keeps squinting at him, until he confesses. “I think I’m dating Eames.”

*

“So. Explain this thing to me. About you and Yusuf.” Arthur says, his mouth at Eames' inner thigh.

“Darling,” Eames gasps, his muscles twitching under him. “Absolutely not. We can talk about it when your teeth aren't so close to my vulnerable areas.”

Arthur gives him a friendly nip before sucking on the skin there, almost at the juncture between leg and groin. “Tell me. Or I'll call Rita.”

“He's been my best mate for a long time,” Eames says, tugging loosely on Arthur's hair to get him to put him mouth on his dick. Arthur hides his grin in another sucking kiss, pressing the pads of two fingers gently against the soft skin behind Eames' balls. “Ah! And he's not ace but he's aromantic, you know, he doesn't —”

“I'm familiar,” Arthur says, and finally puts his mouth to Eames' cock, but only by mouthing the side of it. Eames lets out a low groan. “And?” Arthur prompts, amused.

“And he's a nice bloke. He worries about people's feelings. People getting attached. He has a few rules. It's why he doesn't usually sleep with women.”

“Sexist,” Arthur smirks, taking one hand and slicking it up to wrap around Eames, whose whole body goes taut once Arthur has him in a steady grip.

“Birds get attached sometimes,” Eames says. “I don't make the rules.”

“So where do you come in?"” Arthur asks, and it's funny that it's so much more amusing to think of this weird thing Eames does now, from the safety of being Eames' fucking boyfriend.

“Well. You know. When a man loves another man, they can have a threesome with the other man's best mate without anyone worrying that someone might want to be romantic with said best mate,” Eames says, and then his hips buck a little into Arthur's grip.

Arthur plants his other palm against Eames' hipbone to hold him down. “I don't…” He said, between long thoughtful pulls of his cock. “Are you saying you fall in love with someone and then invite Yusuf to bed? Because Yusuf is afraid to sleep with people who want to have a romantic relationship with him?”

“Not usually love,” Eames backpedals, panting. “But I do wait for enough fondness or commitment that... Defection seems unlikely.”

“Huh,” Arthur says, pondering. Arthur feels like his own defection is unlikely, and wonders if that telling Eames that would be a suitable token of romantic intent. Eames likes those, when Arthur can manage to shuffle through them. Right now Arthur is hijacking Eames' own list one item at a time, but soon he should probably say it.

 _I won't get romantically attached to Yusuf if we sleep with him_ , he thinks, just in case Eames is reading his mind. As far as love confessions go, it's probably not a winner, but Arthur is still working on these things.

Eames is wearing a t-shirt and no pants. He looks silly and flushed, and Arthur has conflicting desires to kiss him and suck his cock and comb his hair back into order. There are other things he wants, too.

“Gorgeous,” Eames says. When Arthur looks up at him, his eyes are closed. Arthur leaves his hand wrapped around his cock as he moves himself up towards his face so he can press kisses to his collarbone while he pulls him off with a slick hand.

“You're—” he says, and he's going to say something you're supposed to say, _not so bad yourself_ or _so hot_ , but instead he blurts out, “my favorite.”

He's instantly embarrassed, because he recognizes that's a pretty dumb thing to say in bed but Eames arches beneath him, one arm curling around his shoulder to pull him flush with his chest as he ejaculates, several long pulses that get onto both of them.

“Fuck, Arthur,” he says, eyes soft and fond, grinning at him, crooked mouth and swollen lips. “Warn a man before you make his day.”

Arthur kisses his mouth, heartbeat a little wild. “Next time,” he says, and nestles in close.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am trash. Come be my pal on [tumblr](http://www.katiewont.tumblr.com) so we can talk about A/E but also Yusuf. Fucking Yusuf gets me every time. ;)
> 
> ALSO thanks to motetus for the gracious beta work. <3


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